Power is out

Craig2

Member
Had a bit of freezing rain then snow and then some wind. Blew down a pole about 2 miles from the house. Crews are out there working on it now. Sure do appreciate their efforts out there in this nasty weather. Thankful for a generator to run the outdoor boiler and the fan on the furnace and plenty of firewood. We have a hand dug well in the front yard that we get water out of to flush the toilet. It's an inconvenience but have had worse before. I remember when I was about 14 we had an ice storm that snapped poles off like tooth picks. That time we had no power for 10 days. Crews then were working 12 hour shifts, day and night
 
I don't envy the linemen either!

Not enough money to get me out there in the freezing rain, lightning, hurricanes...

Saw the other day where they send a barge load of repair trucks to Puerto Rico, crews meeting them there. I suspect that is a real deal mess over there! Not just from storm damage, but years of "anything goes" repairs.

A very dangerous situation!
 
Wonder whose paying for those infrastructure repairs and upgrades in Puerto Rico. I thought they were broke. Good ole Uncle Sam I suppose. gobble
 
(quoted from post at 19:01:44 01/12/18) I don't envy the linemen either!

Not enough money to get me out there in the freezing rain, lightning, hurricanes...
Amen to that!

It was one thing to be responding to emergency calls during hurricanes, flooding, (fire), and the like, but getting up on a bucket truck near power lines in total darkness with winds trying to whip you off and the chill busting through to your bone marrow.......no thanks, I'll wait inside. :wink:
 
The county emergency text system just warned us our power will be going out to get a tree out of the line coming into town.
 
We had a bad ice storm here about 15 years ago. Some were without power for almost two weeks. I had the tractor generator at the time. So life for us really was not much different than normal. Just a noisy tractor running 24x7. We have well water so had to keep the system going for the livestock. The next year I put in my first stand alone backup generator. I liked it but it was not big enough to run everything we might need. So after a few year I replaced it with a bigger one. It does not have 50 hours on it in almost 8 years. The grid is pretty reliable it seems now.
 
7 0r 8 years ago it was sleeting and lightning struck my transformer, I was the only one served by it. I called the power company. It wasn't more than 15 or 20 minutes until a guy from the power company pulled up, claimed the pole and re-fused it, it immediately blew again. He came down walked up to the house and said the transformer is blown, I am going to the warehouse in the next town about 12 mi away, if there is no transformer of the right size, I will have to drive 60 miles to get one. He was back in a half hour with a transformer. He changed it out by himself with the sleet peppering down all the time. I wasn't out of service more than 2 hours. I worked as a power lineman for 4 years and changed out a lot of transformers with help. That was no small feat. Of course he had better equipment than I did 60 years ago.
 
(quoted from post at 13:35:03 01/13/18) They are part of the United States. So I am sure we sure we are paying.

Yes, No and Maybe................is PR a part of the US .

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commonwealth_(U.S._insular_area)
 
(quoted from post at 09:29:13 01/13/18) Yes, I'm sure uncle Sam is paying for it, just like we paid for Texas, Louisiana, and Florida!


Yup, same same,since P.R is U.S. or us too!
 
When we lived in town we lost power at least 4 times a week(Union Electric) We moved out here about 18 years ago and the total outage is around 4 hours, and two of that was last spring. Now on the REC.
 
When I get a report a storm is coming I run water in the bathtub so can flush the toilet and also save drinking water. I don't have a generator so makes it rough if outage occurs when extremely hot or cold.
 

My wife is wanting to set up a solar system for our well. Have sold our last animal but still would be nice. Can anyone offer suggestions and pitfalls to watch for in this process? Any info would be appreciated. Thanks
 
(quoted from post at 22:53:02 01/17/18)
My wife is wanting to set up a solar system for our well. Have sold our last animal but still would be nice. Can anyone offer suggestions and pitfalls to watch for in this process? Any info would be appreciated. Thanks

Solar has high up front cost , limited storage capacity and limited life span of components , batteries in particular .
Solar is practical only where there is not utility power . Or where utility power is artificially high due to taxes , support of green energy projects such as Ontario, Germany or Denmark. Or where there is a lack of economical baseload generation in isolated areas such as Hawaii.
 

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